Winnebago - Marriage and Family

Marriage. Moiety, and thus patrician, exogamy was a defined ideal, but exceptions are not a recent phenomenon. Marriage also was discouraged among people considered close matrilineal relatives. Duolateral cross-cousin marriage was permitted, but parallel-cousin marriage was proscribed. Uxorilocal residence was normal during the beginning of a marriage, when the groom worked for the bride's family, but as children were born residence usually became patrilocal. There was occasional polygyny, usually with the first wife's younger sisters. On the death of either spouse, the ideal replacement was the spouse's same-sex sibling. There appear to have been no strong interdictions regarding divorce for incompatibility.

Domestic Unit. Permanent villages were made up of extended families representing several to all of the clans, each occupying a long multifamily dwelling with the nuclear units having their individual dwelling areas and fireplaces. The Wisconsinites' fugitive years discouraged large settlements. Later, homesteads also contributed to smaller but usually not strictly nuclear family wigwams, with a continuing preference for units of extended families to live near each other.

Inheritance. A deceased person's belongings were and often still are distributed to mourners beyond immediate descendants.

Socialization. Parents and grandparents instructed children with stories told at night, sacred stories in the winter and secular history at any time of the year. Children learned adult tasks through imitative play and close association with adults of the appropriate sex. At puberty, signified by voice change, boys sought visions through fasting in isolation. Young men whose vision came from the moon, which like the earth is a female deity, became berdaches. Menstrual seclusion was the rule for girls and women, with the onset of menstruation marked by special instructions and isolation when a girl might also receive spirit guidance and prophetic dreams. Compulsory schooling contributed to the end of fasting and other puberty rites in both Nebraska and Wisconsin.